Reducing plagiarism Essay

The Council of Writing Program Administrators(2003) states that plagiarism is one of the most common issues seen in the colleges and universities. The school administration and teachers are concerned about this as it is affecting the students’ work. The problem with plagiarism is not only limited to the course work, but it started affecting the student publications, blogs, and research work according to the WPA council(2003). Every problem has a solution if tried to resolve, in the same way we can try to control this issue by implementing strict rules in schools and creating awareness among students about the importance of their own ideas. Plagiarism is presenting other’s ideas or work as one’s own. It is a form of cheating people by showing someone else’s effort as one’s own by taking away their credit and ignoring them. To gather certain information students refer to many sources, but they should try to understand the data and present it as understood along with citing the sources. Plagiarism is of three categories: intentional plagiarism, unintentional plagiarism, and self-plagiarism.

Intentional plagiarism is stating others idea or work as one’s own without citing them. Unintentional plagiarism is ignoring or wrongly citing the small quotes or phrases taken from other sources. Self-plagiarism is submitting the same work for separate classes without actually doing them. The resources are there to utilize, but they are being misused. A work assigned to student in their academics helps in improving their knowledge by spending time on it to learn various topics and improve their thinking and individual ability. However, the situation is that students tend to plagiarize the work without learning or putting in any effort to understand what they do. This is resulting in the loss of ability to think among them; they are tending to make the work easier by copying instead of learning things. All these are resulting in reducing the standards in students so; the school administrations should take action against this by, teaching students the importance of one’s own originality, the need to learn things and implement strict rules against plagiarism.

Controlling a problem is possible with small efforts, so does plagiarism. Teachers cannot solely provide a solution for this; students also need to put in their effort to reduce this problem. There are a few solutions to this issue:

•Citation can reduce plagiarism. Citing the sources from where data is retrieved, shows that the student has put in the effort to learn the topic, moreover, in this way the credit for original author is given.

•Highlighting the small quotes or phrases taken from other sources and citing them would help is reducing plagiarism.

•The school authorities should implement strict rules against plagiarism and make students aware of it. Teachers can have discussions with students regarding their academics and help students to overcome their problems. Some students’ plagiarize as they have fear in them that they cannot do a perfect work on their own and some as they cannot manage their time. Such students should speak to their teacher or adviser about how to overcome that fear and manage time, so that they can develop their own ideas.

•Teachers should create awareness among students regarding the importance of developing one’s own thinking capacity. They should make the student aware of what issues might arise by plagiarism so that they would not choose it.

•There are many tools available on the web to check for plagiarism, students can use them to avoid plagiarism and schools can use it to verify if it is the student’s original work.

•Lastly, students should try to develop their interest towards their academics, which would help in reducing plagiarism. Knowledge is something, which increases by working on it, rather than copying and displaying someone else’s work as one’s own. The student should know the value of originality and try to improve it rather than ignoring it. Most importantly, credit is to be given for others work when using it in one’s own work by citing, which helps in reducing plagiarism.

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